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Albion Online: Main Arguments in the P2W Debate

1. The “Indirect advantage via trade argument” (Pro P2W)
The argument says that you get an advantage by doing the following: Buy gold with real money. Trade that gold away to other players for items and/or silver. Therefore, indirectly, you have just bought yourself an advantage.

The counterargument does states that while you do obtain items or silver in this way, it is not an issue because i) Another player has gotten the benefits for your trade, in terms of the gold you paid him. So it is not just you who “wins”, it is the other player or other players as well you have a lot of Albion Online Silver. So you could call it “pay for others to win”. This is very similar to the Plex system in Eve Online, that is widely considered not be to Pay to Win.

2. The “Reduced Need for Silver Farming” argument (Pro P2W)
The argument says that if you obtain gold via real money, you can progress in the game without having to worry about earning silver that much. As a result, you can advance faster.
The counter-argument states that while this is true, it should rather be called “pay to save time” or “pay to farm less” or “pay to play less”. It also states that to build and craft, currency alone is not enough as you will still need the ressources from the world. Or, in order to progress in general, you will still need to collect fame&experience via the destiny board, which you cannot buy with gold.

3. The “Full Loot argument” argument (Contra P2W)
The argument highlights that given that PvP is full loot, if a player with lower skill try to PvP in high end gear, he will simply get killed and looted by more skilled players, so it might as well be called “others pay for you to win” if you are a skilled player.
The counter argument states that while this is true, there could also be skilled players who try and get an advantage via the gold system. The reply to this is that – based on testing so far – high end players usually have no problems in obtaining silver, it is rather ressources that become rare. (as intended by the game’s design)

4. The “Shared Benefits” Argument (Contra Pw2)
The argument states that as silver yields in Albion Online are essentially capped, everytime that somebody pays for an expense such as crafting or upkeep with Gold instead of Silver, reducing his need to farm, it means that it becomes easier for everybody else to farm silver. The counter argument states that while this is nice, it does not change their arguments above.

5. The “Gold for Free” Argument (Contra P2W)
The argument states that as gold can be freely traded between players, it is quite easy for you to obtain gold without spending any real money. Either because you play more and trade away your extra gains, or because you have a special skill or control a certain territory which means you can obtain a lot of gold from other players via trade with Albion Online Gold. This will then allow you to obtain the premium status or all vanity items without investing real money. The counter argument states that while this is nice, it does not change their main arguments above

6. Shared Benefits of Swap transactions (Contra P2W)
The argument says that if there is too much gold being offered in the player driven gold/silver market, the game is going to give a discount on silver prices for certain activities such as repairing items. In this way, if a lot of people buy gold for real money in order to trade it away for silver with others players such that the gold/silver rate drops below the reference rate of 100, everybody benefits.